


Transformation

by DragonflyxParodies



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alduin isn't a total dick, Changing Fate, Elder Scrolls Be Up To Something, Gen, Original Character(s), i have no clue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22091821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonflyxParodies/pseuds/DragonflyxParodies
Summary: Alduin's wall has changed; an Elder Scroll has meddled; things will not be the same.
Relationships: Alduin & OC, Delphine & Esbern
Kudos: 7





	Transformation

**Author's Note:**

> With my inability to delete things that are longer than a couple sentences even if I am never going to do Things With Them Again nor have nay idea What They Were Supposed To Be; here! Have this!  
> If you want it, you have my blessings, just let me know. Otherwise, for all intents and purposes; this is done.

It had changed.

Stone—especially stone infused with ebony, forged so that even the Dwemer could not have matched the maker’s skill—should not have been able to do so.

Yet it had.

The carvings, so vivid in detail and lifelike in their terrible ferocity, had disappeared.

But the stone slab was not devoid of its fabled portents either.

“…Delphine.” A hoarse whisper, barely audible even in the chamber designed so that the smallest sound was multiplied tenfold.

“Delpine!”

“ _Delphine!”_ His frantic cries echoed throughout the Temple, even as Esbern refused to take his gaze away from Alduin’s Wall, in case the carvings changed, in case something that he was not aware of shifted again.

Alduin, wings spread and terrible maw gaping open, lunged at him, eyes burning out from the Wall. Even with the petrifying image, though, Alduin’s gaze was focused solely on the small figure before him, no detail visible save the vague outline of a person. Both were wreathed in strange carvings, curling like mist—or perhaps magic—around both of them.

A maelstrom of power.

Delphine stumbles into the main chamber of the Temple, buckling on her sword belt as sleep slides free of her. She surveys the room for a threat first, and lets out a disgusted sigh as she opens her mouth to berate him-

-and then she sees it.

“What in Talos’ name…?”

“It’s done.”

“Then what is this?” Delphine demands, unable to hide a tremor in her voice.

Esbern has no answers for her.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The child doesn’t know what she is doing, but even ignorance is unforgivable in the eyes of the gods.

She has read everything in the library, and knows more than others three times her age would know. She has never been allowed to touch the Scroll locked away beneath a display case’s glass, the only book she has yet to read, a souvenir of a bygone age.

It is a whim of a being more powerful than those that came before the Aedra that seals her fate, an act of mercy destined to be an execution.

She speaks to the Scroll, as she so often does to the other books, and it is the idle chatter of an excited child that awakens it. A young mind, so easily malleable.

She plays with the jewel clasp before the Scroll releases itself for her, spilling across the floor in a river of cream and gold.

The symbols, so old that even the language of the Aedra appears newborn to it, does not ache in her eyes or burn on her lips. With her palms braced on either side of it, legs straddling the long roll of paper as she begins to read from the top, like her mother taught her, her mind registers only that it is written in a strange sort of ink that glows like the stars.

There are big words that she doesn’t understand, and she is disappointed because she can’t ask her father what they mean because this transgression cannot ever be discovered.

The words begin to glow, suddenly, and she feels a sort of jump in her chest. A pain, but a kind of exciting pain, not a bad kind.

She watches in fascination, until a soft spasm in her fingertips alerts her of something strange. When she glances down at her hand, her eyes widen in surprise.

Her fingertips are slowly dissolving into a silvery sort of dust that floats in the air and pours directly onto the Scroll. Her first instinct is to wipe it away, because she knows she can’t ever get anything on any of the books, but her hand passes through it with only a tingly feeling to mark that it had ever happened.

She is still trying to puzzle out what is happening when, with a soft sigh, her body collapses into Time, submitting to the Scroll’s call. A puff of silver dust washes over its pristine page, not a speck touching the floor.

It rolls itself up with a rustle of silk and paper, and a metallic click as its clasp shuts.

It is remaking something wonderful.

XXXXXXXXXXXXX

He is tired, and wishes he could sleep longer, but there is something that won’t let him. He doesn’t realize what it is at first, but then it strikes him in an instant as he wakens-not something he is familiar with, but something he knows all too much about.

A frightened sort of keening fills him, another soul being remade.

Sympathy is not something he is supposed to feel, but he lets himself wake and rolls towards it, liquid in the atmosphere until he reaches the spirit crying.

It is the first essence he has ever encountered here, in the womb of Time itself. He is curious, but a sort of anxiousness overtakes him as it continues to cry, and he draws it into his awareness, at a loss for means of communication.

Eventually he figures out how to do it, by focusing on an emotion and pulsing it towards this secondary soul.

It latches onto him, and for a split second-neither of them exist. There is only one.

Stunned, it releases him, and he immediately swoops around it, gathering it up and protecting it from the brunt of Time. He has already been remade into something of Time, something different, and now he _is_ Time. The tiny essence has not yet progressed that far yet, however. It is subject to the careless currents, and fragile enough to be entirely shattered.

That sympathy, that desire to help that he knows is forbidden makes him soothe it, comfort it until Time is done and it is no longer what it was.

And then, again, it clings to him, negating both of their existences.

XXXXXXXXXX

In the swamps of Hjaalmarch, there is a crackle of lighting as a black storm brews above the small Hold city of Morthal.

Hjaalmarch is the place of nightmares, the shadowed crypt of Skyrim. Vampires and undead haunt the night, monsters lurk below the stagnant water, disease a constant threat.

The citizens are hardy, and have weathered Time resolutely since they first came to the unforgiving stretch of land they call home. Some are beyond Time’s immediate touch, secreted amongst cattle that remains as clueless as those that came before them.

Time likes that, and has long made a practice of sinking itself into the flesh of all those that live there. So, what better place to deposit its most treasured soul?

A wail of agony slithers its way into the dreams of Morthal’s people.

One man wakens.

He finds her amid a patch of deathbell flowers, curled into a ball as she stares mutely, wide eyed, at the earth beside her.

He asks her if she is alright. The only response he receives is an empty stare.

Joric, Jarl of Hjaalmarch, reaches out hesitantly and touches her arm. One of Time’s favored, he expects a vision to take him, of the child’s past, or of her future. He receives nothing.

He studies her silently, recognizing the importance of that single touch, and sighs.

Something is coming, darker and far more powerful than he has ever seen before. He scoops her up and carries her back to Morthal without a word.


End file.
